The death of a man who was being held at a federal detention camp in Texas in early January may be investigated as a homicide after the local medical examiner reportedly found the preliminary cause was “asphyxia due to neck and chest compression”.

Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban migrant who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in July last year, was pronounced dead on 3 January. He had been in ICE custody at Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent camp at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso.

In a press release about his death, the agency claimed he died after “experiencing medical distress” and said his cause of death was under investigation. The Department of Homeland Security had previously highlighted Lunas Campos’s arrest as one of the “worst of the worst” a category used by DHS to trumpet what they claim as victories of Trump’s mass deportation campaign. He has convictions of child sexual abuse, possession of a firearm, and aggravated assault.

But in a recording reviewed and first reported on by the Washington Post, the El Paso county’s office of the medical examiner reportedly told a member of Lunas Campos’s family that the office was preparing to classify the death as a homicide, subject to results of a toxicology report.

Lunas Campos was one of four ICE detainees who died while in custody in the first 10 days of the year and his death was part of a troubling trend; 2025 was the agency’s deadliest year in more than two decades. According to a Guardian investigation, last December was the deadliest month, with six fatalities.

He was also at least the second person who had been housed at the camp, which has repeatedly come under fire from human rights groups for reports of abuse and inhumane conditions, to die in recent months. Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old Guatemalan man who had also been held at Fort Bliss, died in the hospital after health complications late last year.

ICE officials and the county of El Paso’s medical examiner could not be reached for comment about whether Lunas Campos’s death would be officially classified as a homicide. A representative of the office responded to the El Paso Times saying that the autopsy report was still pending and not publicly available.

The press release from ICE about Lunas Campos’s death claims that he’d been put into segregation after he became “disruptive while in line for medication”. It was there, officials said, that staff “observed him in distress and contacted on-site medical personnel for assistance”. He was pronounced deceased by medical responders at 10.16pm.

Witnesses in detention with Lunas Campos told the Washington Post a different story. Santos Jesus Flores, who was detained at the camp where Lunas Campos died, said he saw five guards choking the man as he struggled after he resisted going into the segregation unit because he didn’t have his medications.

During the struggle, Jesus Flores said he heard Lunas Campos say again and again in Spanish that he couldn’t breathe.

“He said, ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe.’ After that, we don’t hear his voice anymore and that’s it,” Flores told the Post.